


Absent Father

by jujubiest



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-03
Updated: 2014-07-10
Packaged: 2018-02-07 08:25:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1892109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While setting about the Herculean task of cleaning and packing for college, Ben Braeden finds something strange in the back of his closet. Something that has no business being there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Letter

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Meta: So Dean was at Lisa's for a year, right?](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/58698) by Bex. 



_I remember the days you were a hero in my eyes_  
 _But those are just a long lost memory of mine_

* * *

 

Ben stares at the mess in his closet with something very close to despair. He’s managed to put off this particular chore for _years,_ keeping the rest of his room neat as a pin by shoving whatever didn’t have a place in here where it wouldn’t annoy his mom every time she saw it. Now though, it’s Judgment Day and he has to pay the price for his laziness, because he’s leaving for college in a few months and he’s pretty sure if he leaves this mess behind his mom will have a shit fit the likes of which the Braeden household has never seen.

He stares at the unmitigated disaster of a closet for a full five minutes, willing it to reorder itself without his input. Unfortunately, superpowers and magic don’t exist, so at long last he dives head first into the task, hoping to make it go as quickly as possible

He’s four days in, surrounded by crap he hasn’t seen since he was twelve or thirteen, and wondering how on earth he is ever going to get all this organized when he finds it: a little black wooden box with odd carvings all over it, shoved into the back corner of his closet in a pile of other stuff, random toys and empty CD cases and the little green army jacket he wore until it was literally in tatters and hid when his mom started threatening to throw it out. He picks up the box and stares at it, mess momentarily forgotten because he’s getting that feeling, the one you get when there’s a thought just out of reach and the harder you try to reach for it the further away it gets.

Opening the box, he finds a folded piece of notebook paper inside and, underneath that, a strange necklace. It’s a black leather cord with a large, heavy bronze amulet dangling from it, a roughly-shaped face with horns. It looks like something out of one of his history books, and it almost tingles in his hands.

Without really thinking about why, he puts it around his neck and turns his attention to the paper, unfolding it carefully and staring down at the message inside. It’s short, and written in familiar, messy little-kid handwriting. His handwriting.

> _To Dean  
> _
> 
> _Happy Father’s Day_
> 
> _Love, Ben_

The feeling of something just out of his reach doubles. He doesn’t remember writing this. He’s never known anyone named Dean, and he’s never bought a Father’s Day gift in his life.

Ben has never known his father. He asked his mom a couple of times about the guy, who he was, what he did, where he went…but she would never really answer him. After a while he stopped needing to know, and to tell the truth it hasn’t bothered him for years that he didn’t have a father, no matter how some people—his mother’s nosy but well-meaning neighbors, in particular—think it should. Ben and his mom have always done okay, even when things looked really bad. Honestly, sometimes it felt like they were being watched over by some higher power, someone keeping them safe and helping them out when they needed it the most. Ben’s never been to church in his life, but he says a prayer of thanks every single night anyway. His life has been a happy, lucky one, and he knows it.

But this…this pulls at him the way nothing else ever has. This is a _name,_ a name he apparently felt worthy of attaching to the concept of father, even if he doesn’t remember it. He doesn’t know how that could be possible. He would _remember_ someone he cared enough about to make a Father’s Day card for. No way would he forget that. It doesn’t make sense. But try as he might, Ben can’t recall a face to go with the name, or even a last name, or where he might have met someone like that. It’s not like there’s nothing there, either, though. It feels like something in his brain has been misplaced, and that kind of freaks him out a little. He folds up the paper and stuffs it in his pocket.

He thinks for a second about asking his mom, but decides against it almost immediately. She doesn’t like to talk about the past and he doesn’t want to remind her of it if it’s that unpleasant for her.

He'll just have to find out about Dean on his own.


	2. Chapter 2

Ben figures the best place to start looking is in local birth, death, and marriage records. He says a silent prayer of thanks to the gods of technology, environmentalism, and government transparency that the state of Michigan requires all public records to be available digitally. The idea of thumbing slowly through stacks and stacks of old hard copy records is…well, kind of cool, actually. It makes him think of old movies about hardboiled private detectives and spunky investigative reporters. But in practice, this is probably faster.

Two hours later, Ben has come up with a whole lot of nothing. Birth and death certificates came up empty, so the guy wasn’t from Michigan and is either still alive, or died somewhere else. Ben starts on the marriage licenses next, but hits another dead end an hour later. There are a few guys named Dean scattered throughout, but they’re all way too old or way too young.

Without much hope, he does a Google search for Indiana’s records database. Much as he expected, they don’t have one.

As he’s contemplating the likelihood of getting his mom to let him borrow the car, the woman herself pops her head in and gives him a Look.

“That doesn’t look like cleaning,” she says warningly. “Come on Ben…just get it all over with and then you can surf the net all you want.”

“Sorry Mom,” he says, grinning sheepishly. “I’ll get right on it.”

He’s rewarded with a smile and a shake of the head as he closes his laptop and heads back into the labyrinth of junk that is his closet. _Maybe,_ he thinks, _I’ll find something else to do with Dean._

He doesn’t.

* * *

The next day he’s up bright and early, clicking away on Google. He finished the closet and packed pretty much everything he needs for school the night before, but his mom has the car out running errands and won’t be back until the afternoon. On the one hand he’s disappointed; he wanted to see if he could drive to the city hall in Cicero—it’s only a couple hours’ drive—and poke around their public records the old fashioned way. But on the other hand, this gives him several hours to search the internet and poke around the house without his mom asking any questions or interrupting. He doesn’t want to talk to her about Dean until he has at least a little bit more information.

He types “Dean” into Google, fully expecting to get absolutely nothing useful. The first page is a website for guitars, a lot of college-related stuff, and an actor who lives in Chicago. The second and third page prove to be more of the same, so he tries again, this time eliminating results to do with guitars and education. And that’s what he hits the jackpot.

It’s at the top, a preview of related images, third from the left: a photo of a man in semi-profile. Ben can barely believe it’s that easy. He clicks through to the full-size image just to make sure, and there’s no mistaking it: the man is wearing the necklace currently tucked under Ben’s own shirt. Same bronze, horned head, same worn, dark leather strap.

He examines the rest of the photo, feeling a strange mixture of nervousness and anticipation. It’s obviously a candid photo; he’s not posing or looking at the camera at all, and it’s a little blurry, as though he was moving when it was taken. The man looks angry, actually, like he might be in the middle of yelling at someone. He’s wearing a dark jacket, and has light brown, neatly close-cropped hair that reminds Ben of the way he wears his own. His lip is split. Other than that, there’s not much to see. The background is too blurred and dark for Ben to distinguish anything about it, other than that he seems to be in a room with a window that’s covered by dingy white blinds.

Curious, he navigates his way to the page the image came from, and raises an eyebrow when he sees that it’s a website dedicated to the study of the paranormal. He almost goes back to Google and starts over, but his eyes fall on the caption beneath the mug shot and stick there: Dean Winchester, age 29. Image courtesy of Harry Spangler, Ghostfacers Co-Founder.

Ben starts to read.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is short...but chapters will be getting longer, and familiar faces will start showing up pretty soon.


End file.
